


Before the Sun Goes Dark

by badboy_fangirl



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-31
Updated: 2011-12-31
Packaged: 2017-10-28 14:48:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,189
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/309006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badboy_fangirl/pseuds/badboy_fangirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bonnie gets into the thick of things to end Klaus once and for all. As she and Damon grow closer, Elena gets upset.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers through 3x05; goes AU after that, but incorporates ideas/themes/plot points from 3x06-3x09.
> 
> From loving_emerald's prompt of: _a Bonnie/Damon/Elena triangle – Stefan is edging out of the picture, Bonnie and Damon are getting closer, and Elena is a jealous green monster. But Damon loves Elena best, of course._

_Does anybody know how to hold my heart?  
How to hold my heart?  
'Cause I don't want to let go let go let go of you._  
–from "Hold My Heart" by Sara Bareilles

 

Two days after she breathes life back into Matt Donovan, Bonnie Bennett stands on the far side of the football field watching Stefan Salvatore harassing and bullying a variety of people.

The moment she realizes that Stefan has gone to a place that none of them ever dreamed he could go her terror level is so high she can't stop shaking. She goes straight home without saying goodbye to anyone and paces across the floor of her bedroom, remembering moments over the last year; the times when Damon wanted Emily's crystal, or the moment when he tried to rip out her jugular, and those smaller, quieter instances when she realized he would do anything for Elena, but not in the same way that Stefan would do anything for Elena.

Stefan wanted to _please_ Elena; Damon wanted to _preserve_ her. The difference between them had made Bonnie's job easier; when in crisis, she went to Damon. When hard choices had to be made, she sought out the older Salvatore. When she wanted to make good on a threat, she went to Stefan.

But now, Stefan _was_ the threat, and pardon her French, but he was fucking _scary_. Much scarier than Damon had ever thought of being, and that's the moment for her when she truly understands. For all of Damon's irrational behavior and pointed jackassiness, he is not nearly as dangerous as Stefan; part of her wonders if maybe he never was. Perhaps he'd just let them all be afraid of him to accomplish his purposes. Stefan's behavior just seems–mean. Ruthless. Vampiric.

She's probably just desensitized to Damon now, but part of her really thinks he was never like this. That's why she texts him, asking him to come to her house.

She still lives at her grandmother's, because her family owns the property and her father doesn't want to sell it. Sometimes it's lonely living there by herself, but overall, it's been fine. She's spent many nights at either Caroline or Elena's homes when she was tired of being by herself. But really, the best part about it had always been that it was a Damon-free zone. He couldn't come in, and she was safe there. But now, when he shows up a half hour after her text, she invites him in and he smirks at her, but also tips his head in acknowledgment.

Something momentous is happening, and even Damon isn't a big enough jerk to try and ruin it.

He stands in her living room and looks around, but when his eyes come back to hers, he widens them comically before purring, "You called?"

"Stefan has gone crazy," she says without preamble. Elena had given her a vague sense of what had transpired with Klaus, but she'd had a hard time talking about it, so Bonnie hadn't pressed her too hard for much detail.

"Well, no, not... _crazy_." Damon holds his hand up and turns an imaginary dial. "He's flipped the switch. He's sort of like how I was when you first met me, only not sneaky. He knows everyone knows and so he's just having a good ol' time with it."

"What are we going to do about it?" she demands, and Damon's eyebrows shoot up towards his hairline. "We can't just let him terrorize people. Should we throw him in the basement?"

"Aren't you generous? I'm pretty sure if this was me, I'd just be getting some aneurysms, or you'd be setting me on _fire_ or something." Damon shakes his head dismissively when she opens her mouth to defend herself. He smiles as if bygones are bygones and says, "I already had this discussion with Elena. We aren't going to be able to vervain him into submission. He's in a place that he's not going to come back from easily, if at all. We'd probably be better off lighting some torches and running him out of town than trying to lock him up." Bonnie huffs out an irritated breath as Damon smiles at his own joke. "I do have an idea, of course," he says, as though he was just waiting for the opportunity. "I think that perhaps this could hold the answer," he says as he pulls something from his pocket and holds it up for her to see. Bonnie recognizes Elena's necklace, and moves closer to look at it. Damon grabs her hand and presses the necklace in her palm. "Elena said you said it has magic of its own; Elena also said that it once belonged to Klaus's sister. Considering how old they are as Original vampires, this little thing could hold all the answers we need."

"To make Stefan switch back?" Bonnie asks, looking at the charm in her hand. Damon curls her fingers around it as though he's afraid she'll drop it.

"No, Bonnie, to kill Klaus. That's still the objective. Once Klaus is dead, his compulsion wears off. Only then can we hope to get Stefan back to 'normal.'"

Bonnie purses her lips and Damon squeezes her hand. This is how it works now–how it's worked all along, maybe?–she and Damon, unlikely teammates who somehow want the exact same thing.

"It's probably better if Elena doesn't know you're investigating this," he says, his eyes narrowing at her meaningfully.

Bonnie nods. "I agree." She'll tell Elena when there's something worth telling her.

"Okay," he says, letting her hand go. "Let me know what you find out."

 

 

A few days later, Damon's cleaning up some of Stefan's mess–blood on the carpets is always something that annoys him–and as he drags two of the Persian rugs out to the shed behind the house to get them cleaned (he has a carpet cleaner guy on retainer who is compelled to ask no questions about what he's extracting from the fibers of the area rugs), he's contemplating all the times when this had happened before. Things had really changed between him and Stefan, because normally this is the time when Damon cuts and runs; he doesn't like cleaning up his brother's messes anymore than he likes worrying that everyone's about to find out he's a vampire. (And usually one led to the other.)

He knows he won't leave Mystic Falls because of Elena, but let's face it: he could solve this problem in two seconds flat. He could just stake Stefan and be done with it. But he won't, because despite years of animosity, everything that's happened in the last year alone has given Damon something that he hasn't had since he was human: the knowledge that underneath it all, Stefan does love him.

He considers it a point of weakness, but Damon loves his brother in return; and Damon loves Elena, and so there are two people for whom he feels responsible towards when it comes to Stefan. He doesn't want to kill him because of his own complicated feelings, but he knows he can't because of Elena's state of mind. She's more distraught over Stefan's walk on the dark side than she ever was over any of Damon's actions; he supposes that stems from the fact that his antics, while sometimes shocking, or even devastating (read: Jeremy), were never in opposition to the things he professed or showed he was capable of. (Also: she's in love with Stefan.)

Elena thought she'd seen Stefan in his darkest place; oh, how wrong she had been.

He'd been by the Gilbert home the day before, and Alaric invited him in; they had changed the ownership of the house from Elena and Jeremy to Alaric to reinstate the protection on the house. At this point, the only vampires who could go inside were Damon and Caroline, and he had to admit, it felt a little funny to be on the "good" list.

(Ric was still being pissy about the neck-snapping thing, but he hadn't taken another stab at forbidding Damon's on-going friendship with Elena. He did give him the stink-eye constantly, but he didn't say anything, which is good, because Damon didn't want to get mad enough to snap his neck again.)

As he's coming into the house through the back entrance, he hears someone enter on the front side. He focuses, listening closely, and he can tell it's a human guest, and whomever they are, they're alone, not accompanying Stefan for some kind of messy feeding game.

(No, the irony is not lost on him how just a year ago, he was doing this sort of thing to Stefan, but it still pisses him off. Blood on his carpets is not good, and Stefan never cleans up after himself.)

Once he makes it back to the front hall, he sees Bonnie standing in the living room entrance. "Hey," he calls, and she spins around, obviously on guard. When she sees him, her face relaxes into a smile.

"Hey," she replies. "Is Stefan around?"

Damon shakes his head. "No, I haven't seen him since this morning. What's up?"

Bonnie holds up Elena's necklace, letting it swing freely from her fingers. "I made contact with someone who said she's the Original Witch."

Damon comes to a stop in front of Bonnie, and everything eager and curious peaks within him. "Do tell," he says, motioning her into the living room.

"Apparently she knew Klaus, back before he became a vampire, and she's been trying to destroy him ever since. But every booby trap she set up he's found a way around."

Damon snorts. "Well, Katherine's convinced he's superiorly smart, though I have my reservations. Did she give you any tips?"

Bonnie smiles, her lips moving upwards in a slow, satisfied way. It makes something within Damon wildly hope even before she nods her head. "Oh, yeah.

"She's got enough power that she's willing to lend me; and get this: her power seems to be more than the 100 dead witches from the burial site because she's really the Original Witch. As in _all witches_ came from her. She's like my great, great times twenty generations grandmother or whatever. She told me that killing Elena is the best way to ensure Klaus doesn't upset the balance anymore, but I told her I wanted to kill Klaus, and that I'm willing to do whatever it takes. So she agreed; while she's worried about what the other Originals might do, he's the only one who is both vampire and werewolf."

"You were able to reason with this...ghost?" Damon asks, feeling skeptical. The only thing that keeps him hooked calmly is that he knows that Bonnie would never do anything to hurt Elena. He's just not so sure trusting a non-entity is a wise move.

"We went back and forth for a while, but I really feel like I convinced her I can kill Klaus if she'll help me. It's a complicated spell that she said I'll need to work on for a while before I'll be able to perform it in the way that will kill him."

Damon nods. He doesn't have any other offers, currently, so it's best to go with what he's got. "Well, I guess that makes our path clear. I'll work on Stefan, figure out how we're going to get Klaus back here, ASAP. You hang on to Elena's necklace, and work on that spell."

"Right," Bonnie says, and she smiles giddily, tucking the necklace into her pocket.

Damon slaps her shoulder affectionately. "It's kinda cool, us being on the same side, huh?"

Bonnie regards him in silence for a long moment, but then softens. "I guess we've been on the same side for a while now; since the first time we tried to take Klaus down." She looks at him with kindness, and Damon really has to stretch to remember that this girl hated him not that long ago.

A lot has changed in the last year; when he thinks of what he wanted when he first returned to Mystic Falls, it seems like another lifetime; another _him_. (And it was. He was the humanity-switched off one, and Stefan was falling in love with Elena Gilbert.)

Possessed of something he'll never be able to explain, he finds himself confessing, "If I had known then what I know now, I'd have never wanted to get into the tomb."

Surprise colors Bonnie's expression. Sudden tears make her eyes glisten and she blinks rapidly, dropping his gaze. Damon looks away, and clears his throat. He wasn't trying to make her cry, so it's a little awkward, but it's possible he's wanted to say that for a long time and just couldn't bring himself to do it before. (It's possible he's become overly fond of a few people besides Elena, and at least Bonnie's not mad at him right now, unlike Ric.)

"Bonnie?"

They both jerk around at the sound of Elena's voice, and Damon can't believe he didn't hear her come in.

"Hey, Elena," Bonnie says.

"What are you doing here?" Elena asks, her eyes flickering over Damon before going back to her best friend.

"I just came by to tell Damon how awful Stefan's acting. Make sure he knows." She cocks her head, and her eyes go back and forth between Elena and Damon. "I guess that's why you're here, too, huh?" Bonnie lies so smoothly, he feels an even greater sense of respect for her flood through him. He knows her figurative balls are pretty damn big, but her ability to keep things under wraps is probably the thing he likes most about her. Elena has enough to deal with without worrying if what Bonnie's trying to do will really work.

Not to mention, by putting the focus back on Elena–who wasn't there to report anything to Damon, in fact she had told him just the day before that she wouldn't be coming to the Boarding House anymore just so she didn't have to risk seeing Stefan–Bonnie made sure that no one cared why she was there at all.

(Yes, the witch was really, really good.)

Elena nods evasively and then makes full eye contact with him, some sort of desperate, _I-need-you_ vibe that he keeps picking up more and more from her spiking across the space separating them. Taking the cue from both of them, he wraps things up efficiently. "Bonnie was just heading out. Lets get out of here before Stefan shows up, shall we?"

He puts his hand out and closes the space between them, his palm sliding easily over Elena's shoulder to redirect her back to the front door she'd just come through. She bumps his hip with her own as they walk out to her car. "Wanna go to The Grill?"

"Sounds fun!" he quips and she giggles, a hand tucking strands of her hair behind one ear as he opens the car door for her.

 

 

At The Grill, Damon orders ribs and fries for them to share and also gets them beer. ("None of the hard stuff in public, the Sheriff might see us!" he says, his eyes twinkling.)

Elena just smiles, because pretty much that's what Damon does for her anymore; he makes her smile. He's the _only_ thing that makes her smile, because if she thinks about it too much, everything about Stefan will make her cry.

She's not the naive little girl who met a vampire in a cemetery a year ago and embarked upon a world she could never have guessed existed, but at the same time, she really did think that with her and Damon's efforts, Stefan would come home, and with hard work on all their parts, he could be on the mend. The reality is that he _is_ home, but doesn't even faintly resemble the boy she met. What is actually worse is that when she looks at Damon, when she asks Damon questions, when he avoids her eyes or answering her in full, she realizes not only has he seen this before, but in his strange way, he's trying to protect her from it.

(He would have helped her forget it entirely, and she doesn't take that gesture lightly, given their history.)

And though she's tired of being protected, tired of having to fight for the right to the truth, she can't help the way it makes her heart tighten in her chest. Damon's been doing that to her all summer, ever since he declared his love for her and she waited for him to die...and he didn't. Again and again she'd been faced by moments where she could literally weep for him, for the way he felt about her, for this thing that he so freely gives her when she doesn't deserve it and hasn't earned it. (Isn't sure she wants it. Isn't sure she doesn't.)

The good thing about Damon is he mixes it up enough–pulling crap like flashing her, or launching her into a lake, or snapping Ric's neck in an unmitigated assholey move that no one should forgive, but they will because Damon makes it impossible to stay mad at him forever–that she doesn't have to dwell too long on the parts that tear her heart out. (Ric is making a valiant effort at keeping his distance, and Elena has not needled him about it too much.)

As they eat their ribs, Damon's eyes flash at her and he licks his fingers with flourish before asking, "What's up, _mon ami_?"

He always knows, too, how to reach out to her in these moments so that she doesn't feel like a jerk for needing his help; his advice. It's such an odd development between them. "I was wondering about what you said in Chicago–about Stefan being a cocky, ripper douche. How did you deal with him when he was like that?" She's looking for real answers here, because locking him up isn't going to work, but she doesn't think she can deal with him day in and day out at school. Not without breaking, and she doesn't want to give him that satisfaction.

"I would leave," Damon says quietly. He leans forward, resting his arms on the table. "Just take off, and not look back. We'd usually find each other in ten or twenty years, and I'd see what he was up to. He was always one extreme or another; and if he was hanging around with Lexi, I didn't ever stick around. She didn't like me, and I didn't really like her. She always acted like I was something she needed to scrape off her shoe, even though she was often rehabilitating the–" he cuts himself off suddenly. "Anyway, that's not a solution for you, unless you want to run away in the middle of the night." He pauses, examining her face closely. "I mean, we _can_ do that, if you want. I'll take you somewhere, hide you out from him. I'll do whatever you want."

For a split second, the appeal of that idea almost overwhelms her. But, in truth, that's no better than Damon wiping her memory for her. They need a real solution, not an escape hatch. She eats a fry so she doesn't have to answer right away and then she meets his gaze again. He's watching her intently, but there's no coercion in his expression. He's open to whatever she wants. "Ric's training me to protect myself. And we've gotta hope, right? Hope that Katherine will get this Mikael guy to come and take care of Klaus. I can't run away. Even though, I'll be honest, it sounds like a good idea."

Damon leans back, relaxing in his seat. "Okay. We'll wait it out. But just know, the offer stands."

She nods and so does he and then he moves on, blithely talking about other unimportant topics, pulling her away from her worries for just a bit.

Later, she drives him back to the Boarding House (she hadn't drunk any beer, he'd downed both of them), and before he gets out of the car, he turns to her. His eyes are penetrating, and even if she wanted to she would be unable to look away. "Stefan is a vampire. We are _vampires_ , Elena. What he's doing is not a reflection of how he feels about you. Whatever else you've got up there in that head of yours, this is the thing you have to understand. I don't think you really ever have. It's time to get up to speed. Okay?"

She finds herself unable to respond, and he continues, "It's important to arm yourself and know how to defend yourself. But it's also important to understand the situation that you're facing. The _reality_ of it. Think about that."

He climbs from the Mini-Cooper and disappears into the Boarding House.


	2. Chapter 2

_'Cause when it comes to being lucky she's cursed  
When it comes to lovin' me she's worst  
But when it comes to being loved she's first_   
~from "The First Cut is the Deepest" by Cat Stevens (and covered by Sheryl Crow)

 

Elena drives home with Damon's words ringing in her ears. She's angry, for a lot of reasons, most of which start and end with his assumption that she doesn't face reality.

That's all she's done, all summer, is _face fucking reality_. Her boyfriend, whom she believed to be the kindest person she'd ever met, even though he happened to be a vampire, had gone off the deep end. Had disappeared from her life. Had taken with him some intangible thing she didn't even know she relied on. And on top of that, she was faced, every day, with Damon: her boyfriend's brother, who had rarely been kind, who had always been a vampire right in her face, who had somehow fallen in love with her and crawled inside her heart without her permission and who would, if given the chance, break everything she thought she knew about herself.

To imply that she didn't know the reality of her situation was enough to make her want to turn the car around, go back to his house, and slap his face repeatedly.

But she doesn't; she drives home because to go back to Damon's–to _Stefan's_ –was to face something else entirely that she hadn't built up the nerve to look at quite yet.

( _Maybe this is what Damon meant_ , a corner of her mind offers up kindly.)

She parks her car in front of her house and sits there for a long time, just staring up the tree-lined street. These were the sidewalks she'd played on as a child, running through fall leaves with Matt Donovan, learning to ride a bike with her father following close behind her to steady her, spending Saturday mornings mowing the lawn with Jeremy before they were allowed to go do anything "fun." This was the place where her world began, and in reflection, she realizes it has been the place where it all ended.

Gone were the carefree days of youth, gone were moments of safety, wrapped in her father's arms when she'd lost control and the bike had gone out from under her. Now it was vampires and werewolves and witches and doppelgangers–things she can never close the door on. Pandora's box had opened, and there was no shutting it tight ever again.

She nearly jumps out of her skin when Jeremy does a drumbeat on the roof of her car. She flips him off and he smiles in a way she hasn't seen in a long time. He looks _really_ happy, and the sudden thought pops into her head–she wonders if he and Bonnie had finally done _it_. She definitely doesn't want to know about it, but despite everything, if someone has some happiness, she's glad it's her brother and her best friend.

"Come on, loser," he yells through the window. "Ric made dinner!"

Elena grabs her bag and gets out of the car. That's the one thing besides Damon that makes her happy: their weird little family. As she climbs the front steps with him, Jeremy slings his arm around her neck and gives her a sideways hug.

It's a small thing in a vast wasteland of tragedy, but she takes it for what it is.

 

 

Damon gives Bonnie some time to work on the spell, but it's only a few days later when he's driving through town and he just wonders how it's coming along. He's texted her a couple times and she hasn't replied, which isn't always uncommon, though he did think now that they had a joint project she would be less likely to ignore him.

He's asked Stefan (and Rebekah, who has taken up residence in their house for some odd reason) when they can expect Klaus to return, but neither of them seems to know anything. Perhaps they're just not being forth-coming, although from what Rebekah said, she's pissed at Klaus, so he doesn't think she'd keep everything on the down low at the moment. She honestly doesn't know where he went or what he's doing or when he'll be back.

Which is super annoying.

He knocks on Bonnie's door because if he can't get anything done on his end of things, the least he can do is see how it's coming on her end.

(He can't help it, he's a doer, and not getting anywhere is nearly as aggravating to him as blood on his carpets.)

She opens the door and gasps when she sees him. There is a split second where he registers that there are tears all over her face and then she moves to slam the door shut and he just reacts, wedging himself between the doorjamb and the door, grunting when it slams into his solar plexus. She's a little stronger than he expects her to be. "Hey," he says as she shoves the door harder into him, like it could close shut with him standing there. "What's the matter?" he asks.

He hasn't done anything, not one damn thing that could be construed as bad behavior. He has not even joined in with Stefan in the blood games he's been playing with various sorority girls from the next town over. No one knows about that, because of course he'd never tell Elena what her ex-boyfriend is up to, but all the same, he's kept himself clean as a whistle.

There is absolutely no reason for Bonnie to act like she can't stand the sight of him.

"I don't want to see anyone right now, Damon. I told Elena I wanted to be alone; she shouldn't have sent you over here."

Finally pressing his hands to the door so that she can't keep trying to injure him with it, he pushes on it until she relents and steps back herself. He slides inside the house and closes the door behind him. "Elena didn't send me over here. I was just in the neighborhood so I thought I'd drop in and see how your witchy homework was going. Besides, when would Elena ever think to ask me to help you out? That's just crazy talk." He tries to cajole a smile out of her with his sarcasm, but Bonnie just scrubs at the tears on her cheeks like a small child. Despite what he can see are her best efforts, more keep falling, and Damon starts to feel real concern for her. "What's wrong?"

Her face contorts in agony and then she spins away from him. "Jeremy and I broke up!" she cries. Damon has an odd realization that despite her witchy goodness, Bonnie really is just a teenage girl under all that power, and this? This is not what he signed up for. He's nobody's crying shoulder (okay, so maybe he's Elena's, but that's different), but he's not very good at it either, because good grief, he's lived about ten times longer than Bonnie. Whatever issue she and Jeremy have is going to seem completely stupid to him, of that he's sure.

"What happened?" he asks even though he knows he should just turn around and leave.

Her small frame shakes and he takes another step towards her. Gently putting a hand on her shoulder, he says her name softly. "J-just go, D-damon," she chokes out, and the reality is that's exactly what he wants to do.

But he just _can't_. (This may be his most shameful moment ever, a time when he cannot play off the fact that he cares about all these people, even the ones who have tried to kill him.)

"Are you sure you don't want me to stay?" he asks, his voice still soft, his intent making him feel a little ill.

This is what he gets for hanging around with too many humans. One day he's telling a girl he loves her even though she's in love with his brother, the next he's sort of apologizing to a guy who thought having his neck snapped 'crossed a line' even though he owns an eternity ring, and now this. Now? He's just trying to be a good friend.

(It fucking sucks, for the record.)

Bonnie inhales a shaky, sharp sob and then she turns back towards him. Her teary eyes meet his and she shrugs pitifully.

This is how bad things are: Damon puts an arm out and she leans into him. It's not just that he offers comfort, it's that she accepts it.

 

 

There is a moment when Bonnie's head comes to rest against Damon's chest, and the complete foreignness of the whole situation cures her of tears. She's not a weepy girl, anyway, but the unholy alliance of her and Damon puts things in perspective quickly.

Jeremy, the first boy she's ever truly loved, has been cheating on her with a ghost. It's sort of a hard thing to compete with, but the truth is, Bonnie's not made for that kind of drama. She wouldn't fight for Jeremy in any case where he had kissed another girl–living or dead; as far as she's concerned, he's done an irredeemable thing. Crying over it is just a physical reaction, just something she couldn't stop when she was alone in her house with her thoughts.

The irony is that she's sort of cuddling with the guy– _vampire_ –who was really the culprit of all the craziness that her life had become over the last year.

Sure, she might have had a lot of witch-related problems come up anyway, but because of Damon, his brother, and everything they'd brought to Mystic Falls, she'd had it all on a much bigger scale.

Where she used to get angry, though, she suddenly comes to the answer that she might never have known her true self if not for vampires in her town.

She rubs her face against his shirt and then pulls back. She can't quite meet his eyes, but she feels his fingers slip through her hair as she moves away from him. "Thanks," she mutters.

"I didn't really do anything," he says, and she can hear the smirk in his voice, which makes her even more determined not to look at his face for the time being. But then, instantly, he's softer and his next words make her chest tighten. "You want to talk about it?"

She looks up and catches that moment of vulnerability in his eyes, the expression of empathy, of what it's like to love someone who doesn't feel the same way back. "Guess we're two peas in a pod, aren't we?" she says, going for levity. "Should we start a _Pining for Gilberts_ support group?"

Damon scoffs. "Speak for yourself, Witchy. I'm not pining for nobody."

She gives him an appraising look, thinks about correcting his grammar, and then just shakes her head at him. "Keep telling yourself that," she mocks.

The corner of his mouth turns down and he lifts an eyebrow at her before waving a hand dismissively. "As fascinating as our not-lovelives are, the reason I came by was to see how the spell business was going. Any news?"

Grateful for the distraction, as well as the assurance that he wasn't there on a pity mission, Bonnie runs to grab the grimiore she'd found that had a variation on the spell the Original Witch had given her. "Actually, yes, it's going quite well. But I do think I'm going to need to do a practice run. Like, we need someone to test it on before I attempt to do it to Klaus."

Damon follows her across the room to the dining table where the book is laid out. He inspects it, as though he can read Latin, and then he looks at her. "You want me to find a guinea pig, someone we don't care who dies?"

Bonnie lifts her chin. "Actually, I have an idea myself. It was Caroline's suggestion, but once I thought about it, it really is the perfect test."

She sees the answering glee in Damon's face, and she tries not to focus too much on the anticipation she has at ending the existence of someone who has technically never done anything personally bad to her. He whacks her on the back enthusiastically. "I assume you're talking about Barbie!Klaus, and I am all for that."

Bonnie knew he would be, and she tries not to think about what that means, exactly.

 

 

With Caroline's help (and Tyler's, but he doesn't know he's helping), they set up a trap for Rebekah. Because she's been so interested in Caroline's boyfriend, when Damon suggests to Caroline that she and Tyler use a romantic weekend away as bait, Bonnie doesn't even have to add her support of the idea before Caroline is agreeing.

Tyler has been acting so strangely on and off that all Caroline cares about is getting him away from Klaus's sister as well as getting him out from under the loyalty he feels towards Klaus. They don't know for sure that Klaus's death will bring that about, but they are willing to guess it could be nice side effect.

And regardless, Klaus and Rebekah will be dead, and as Damon says, "That's a _yay!_ for everyone." So Bonnie doesn't dwell too long on what they do know for sure about the outcome, only that the outcome has to be dead Original Vampires ASAP.

Bonnie mentions to Damon that they ought to bring Elena up to speed now, but he vetoes the idea. "Let's wait," he says, and for once it doesn't sound like he's bossing her around. "Just until we know if it works. If it works and Rebekah's a goner, then we'll need her help to draw Klaus out anyway. That would be a good time to fill her in."

Bonnie can see it in his face, even though he doesn't say it aloud. If it doesn't work, then only they and Caroline will be the wiser. Less disappointing that way.

They've just finished their planning session at Caroline's house when Liz arrives home from work. As she comes in, so does Elena, who unexpectedly dropped by with some chemistry homework she needed to go over with Caroline. They both look surprised to see Damon there, but Bonnie doesn't miss the way Elena's gaze flits back and forth between her and Damon; the tension in her face isn't exactly anger, but it's some emotion that Bonnie can't quite pinpoint. What she wishes she'd said to Damon prior to their interruption, is that for all his good intentions of not wanting to get Elena's hopes up, she's going to be furious when she realizes they've done all this without letting her in on it.

The one thing Bonnie knows about her best friend is that she doesn't appreciate being shielded from hard truths. Though Damon can't seem to help this softer side of himself with regard to Elena, Bonnie can't help but think it may come back to bite them both in the ass.

 

 

"What the hell is going on with you and Bonnie?" Elena demands, disturbing Damon's quiet time when Stefan and Rebekah are off at school.

He looks up from the sofa he's lounging on with his book and sees her, hands on hips, standing angrily in the doorway of the great room. "More importantly, how did _you_ get away from Stefan?" he asks, and he's truly impressed by the fact that she's been there for ten glorious seconds without his brother flying in behind to "protect" her.

"Damon, I'm serious," she says, coming down a step into the room.

"So am I," he deadpans, even though he knows he can't do this kind of thing to her, not really, not anymore. If Stefan wasn't mind fucking her every chance he got, Damon could tease her and mock her like he used to.

(Damn Stefan, he always ruins everything.)

"To answer your question, nothing is _going on_ with me and Bonnie. I'm actually a little confused by the question." He sets his book aside, but stays on the couch. He doesn't want to tell her, but he doesn't want to outright lie either. He likes Elena trusting him, coming to him in moments of need. But, he also knows what she's like, and how headstrong she can be, and he doesn't want to have to navigate that any sooner than necessary.

"I know something's going on. You two are always..." She gestures inarticulately and then brings her hands together like two mouths talking at each other. "Like, I walk in the room and it stops; or Bonnie starts to say something to Caroline about stuff and then stops herself because she remembers I'm there. I'm not stupid, you know."

Damon hesitates a moment and then nods his head. "I do know you're not stupid. But I don't know what Bonnie's problem is. Maybe she just doesn't want to talk to you about what a douche your brother is. Did you consider that?"

Elena pauses, and then she tilts her head, her eyes narrowing aggressively. "What do _you_ know about Jeremy and Bonnie!? See, that just proves my point! If she's talked to you about _that_ , then something most definitely is going on!"

Offended, even though he knows he really shouldn't be, Damon responds, "She hasn't talked my ear off or anything, but I did go by her house one night and caught her in the middle of a crying jag. So shoot for me feeling bad for her!"

Elena moves further into the room, and Damon gets to his feet because he can't very well face-off with her from a sitting position. She opens her mouth to say something, but snaps her jaw shut instead. She groans in frustration and then folds her arms tightly over her chest. "So, don't add to her problems, then, okay? All she needs is you following her around bothering her."

"Excuse me?" he all but shouts. Now, he _is_ offended, and rightly so. "I don't really think it's up to _you_ who I spend time with, and I'm pretty damn sure if Bonnie didn't want me around, she could just brain whammy me, or set me on fire to get rid of me! I know Stefan's taken on the role of _protector_ for you, but Bonnie doesn't need one. She can take care of herself."

He knows how it sounds, because it rings in his own ears for a split second before Elena slaps his face (really, he should have realized it would escalate, they haven't had one of these in a while), and he doesn't mean to imply Elena can't take care of herself (even though, for the most part, she's had pretty poor judgment, far as he can tell). He's not trying to piss her off, but she pissed _him_ off, and he can't exactly snap her neck to prove his point. The other way of ending this...well, he can't go there, either.

It's probably better, sooner rather than later, to show her how far he'll take it, or at least threaten her with how far he'd take it if she encouraged him any little bit. He grabs the wrist of the hand that just smacked his face and drags her close against his body. Then he moves them both across the room in that barely imperceptible vampire way that has her gasping as he pins her to the wall. He breathes in her face, "You've got to learn to stop slapping the shit out of me."

Elena's eyes flash fire, both the angry kind and the sexual kind, because there's no mistaking what is brewing between them when he's using his hips to prevent her escape; she bucks against him anyway, even though he knows she can feel the way his temper has manifest itself. "Or what?" she challenges, and Damon can't help the smile that curves his mouth. If he wasn't so turned on, maybe he'd have a second of consternation over her giving it right back, but it doesn't surprise him that much. She's Elena, after all. (And as they've already established, she's not stupid. At least not all the time.) And right now, she's staring at his mouth hard enough he can already feel her lips under his.

Or what? He'll _show_ her _or what_.

"Oh, I'm sorry, are you two having a moment?" Stefan's voice interrupts and Damon's eyes jerk to the left, where his brother stands, looking impervious. Damon has a flash, a remembrance of another such moment of intimacy (him sweaty and dying with Elena's lips pressed to his) when, if Stefan had seen them, it would have slayed him. And now, a moment not nearly as innocuous as that one seems to have no effect, other than the amusement that etches Stefan's lips as he smiles at Damon. (Because it does always crack a guy up to realize he's cockblocked another guy.)

Elena gives Damon a hard shove, and he allows it to push him back. She storms out the front door without a word and Stefan calls after her, "Could you make up your mind? It's a bit tedious, having to chase you all over town, you know!?" He flashes another bigger grin at Damon. "Ex-girlfriends," he muses. "Can't please them, no matter what you do."

Damon watches his brother saunter out, hears Elena's wheels spit gravel at the Boarding House, and goes back to his book. It had been a much more exciting morning than he planned on, but at least Elena still didn't know anything about the events scheduled for the next two days.

 

 

Elena makes a beeline for Bonnie as soon as she gets to the cafeteria at lunch time. "Tell me the truth," she says when Bonnie drags her laughing eyes away from Matt, who sits in what used to be Jeremy's spot. "What is going on between you and Damon?"

Bonnie blinks, confusion chased by guilt so quickly, Elena wonders if she imagined it. "What?" Bonnie asks quietly, as though she thinks Elena is speaking too loudly.

"Are you confiding in him about Jeremy because you can't talk to me about it?" Elena asks, sliding into a chair opposite her ex-boyfriend, who is watching their exchange with avid interest.

"Am I confiding–in _Damon_?" Bonnie asks incredulously. "What? No! Are you crazy? It's Damon!"

"He said he found you crying, and I–" Suddenly Elena's mind registers the expression, not just on Bonnie's face, but on Matt's, and she realizes she's being completely irrational. Even if Damon had comforted Bonnie one time, what difference did it make? Why is she so worked up over it anyway?

More importantly, why is she so worked up over _him?_ That moment back at the Boarding House had bordered on crazy, and she'd actually been glad that Stefan had shown up when he did. She knows she's attracted to Damon, but she'd never really been close to acting on it, not like that. Feeling him hard against her belly had created this whole sort of slow-motion fantasy where his hands reached down and grabbed her legs and dragged her upwards so he was pressed in the right place, where it would have done her the most good. And the thought that she would have enjoyed his mouth on hers–that she technically felt disappointed that he hadn't had a chance to kiss her? It was all snowballing into something she'd never let herself consider.

If this is facing reality, she's not interested.

She's had silent arguments with herself over the last few days where she tried convincing herself that she had gone into this with her eyes wide open, that she had understood by the time she committed to Stefan, anyway, just what she was dealing with.

She had accepted that he was a vampire, that he was a creature different from her in an immeasurable way. But she'd really never had to do that, because Stefan had been so careful to never show her all of himself, or the parts of vampirism that he struggled with. He'd been eager to forget his true self, and she had gone right along with it.

Damon, on the other hand, had never hidden anything. And really, that's what's bothering her now. She knows something is going on between him and Bonnie; Elena can see it in the covert way they look at one another when she enters a room, and... "That's it," she whispers and Bonnie's brow creases as she looks at her. Then she reaches out, puts her hand over Elena's and says, "What happened with me and Jeremy isn't changing our friendship, Elena. We've been through too much for me to let something like that ruin anything. I love you, you know that right?"

Elena nods her head and then gets back to her feet, her eyes falling to Matt who is watching Bonnie with something achingly sweet on his face. It shocks her, ricocheting through her body, an answer she didn't even know she needed to find. She all but throws up her hands in surrender, feeling like the biggest jerk in the world. "I have to go," she says, lurching from the table and leaving the cafeteria just as Stefan walks in. He gives her a pained look, like she really is trying his patience with her flitting about, but she takes no real notice of him.

She runs to the bathroom and, finding herself alone, stares at her reflection for a long moment.

"I'm jealous," she says to the empty room. _Jealous of Damon and Bonnie_.

She lifts her gaze, eyes meeting eyes, and she tries to look at herself honestly in the mirror.

She'd asked Caroline only a week or so ago what kind of person it made her to have Damon under her skin? Well, today, she knows.

She's searching for a reason, for an explanation, for there to be something more there than just the fact that maybe Damon and Bonnie like each other; maybe their antagonism has shifted into something else. And what if it had? It's not like she could stop it if it happened.

She wouldn't want to. "I wouldn't," she says to her reflection. "Damon's free to do whatever he wants."

(She hadn't been able to stop it from happening to her, had she?)

She might feel that thing Caroline says makes her human, but she doesn't have to act on it.

She does have her eyes wide open this time. She _knows_ , and that means she _can't_. She _won't_.

But what if Bonnie does?


	3. Chapter 3

_I don't have the power now,  
And I don't want it anyhow,  
So I gotta let it go._   
~from "Shameless" by Billy Joel

 

When Bonnie arrives at the Boarding House to pick Damon up, the sun is setting. Caroline already put into play the whole _Tyler and I are going away for the weekend to reconnect!_ bug in Rebekah's ear the previous day, and this moment is supposed to be the catalyst for getting Rebekah to follow them to the Lockwood cabin near the lake.

But nothing had been rehearsed beyond Damon saying, "Just come over and act all worried about them; I'll do the rest."

Bonnie thinks they probably should have had more of a plan than that, but as she knocks on the heavy oak door, she decides to let her nerves work in her favor. Rebekah answers the door with a bit of a sneer, and when Bonnie asks if Damon's home, the blonde responds, "I haven't a clue."

Turning, she saunters away from the open door, so Bonnie follows her inside, though she hasn't exactly invited her. "Damon?!" she shouts, and both Stefan and Damon appear to her right, at the end of the long corridor, coming from one of the rooms in the depths of the house.

Damon's face lights up like a Christmas tree and he all but floats down the hall towards her. "What brings you by, Bonnie, the Teenage Witch?"  

She can't stop herself from rolling her eyes, but mid-roll she remembers she's supposed to be worried, so she tries to recover quickly. "I just got a really weird text from Caroline. You know how she and Tyler went out of town for the weekend, right?" Bonnie doesn't wait for Damon to respond, and she doesn't look at Rebekah who pauses in her progression up the stairs. "I think something weird's going on with, you know, his _problem_." She inclines her head like she's trying to be subtle.  

Damon's eyes fairly dance as he comes to a stop in front of her, but his voice sounds concerned when he asks, "Do you know where they are?"   Bonnie nods.   "Let's go," he says and he grabs his jacket from the coat pegs hanging on the wall. She turns towards the door as he calls back to Stefan snarkily, "Hold down the fort, kids."

“Wait,” Rebekah says, marching down the stairs. “I’m coming with you.”

“Uh, no you’re not,” Damon retorts as he puts his jacket on.

“Don’t you think it would be wise for someone who knows how to handle a Hybrid to accompany you?” she says, lifting an eyebrow at Damon.

“I know how to handle a Hybrid just fine,” he snaps and his eyes are abruptly so full of anger that Bonnie doesn’t think it’s a put-on. “I can rip Tyler’s heart out no problem.”

“Isn’t he a friend of yours?” Rebekah asks acidly, obviously unaware of the dynamics of their group.

“I won’t let him kill Tyler,” Bonnie inserts, and though it’s off-script _(since they had no script)_ , she notices the way Damon’s eyes flick towards her and his mouth quirks just a little. “I can keep Damon in line,” she continues, and she gives him one of those measuring looks she used to throw at him a lot more often. She suddenly realizes she hasn’t tried—or even wanted—to kill him in a very long time.

He scoffs and then spins on his heel, moving towards the door. “Let’s go, Witchy,” he snipes, not challenging the validity of her statement.

“Stefan!” Rebekah calls. “You should go with them. You know Nik won’t like it if his first successful Hybrid gets killed.” Bonnie turns her attention down the hall, and Stefan looks alert, but not particularly interested in their discussion.

“Stefan has to stay and protect Elena,” Damon says, a final and pleased victory smile stretching his lips. “Sorry, Barbie!Klaus. You have to stay here in boring old Mystic Falls.”

As the door swings shut behind them, Damon slings his arm around Bonnie’s neck. She almost shrugs him off when he tugs her in tight so he can say right in her ear, “If I’m right, and it’s her job to watch over Tyler, nothing’s going to stop her from following us, so drive casual.”

He lets her go gracefully, his arm sliding down her back and putting a little distance between them so that as they near her car, she can move away from him and walk to the driver’s side. She pushes the unlock button on her keypad and looks at him across the roof of the car as he opens the passenger side door. When Caroline was first dating Damon, when he'd just been older, dangerous, and sexy, before any of them knew what he was, or just how dangerous he was, Bonnie hadn't been jealous; she hadn't been blind either, and as time has gone by, and Damon's devotion to Katherine ended and transferred to Elena, she had come through fear and hate to find that sometimes she actually likes him. In some ways they are more similar than they are different, and to try to leave that unacknowledged was simply foolish; and Bonnie is no fool.

All the same, she's never thought of him as anyone who should be dating her friends. He's too old, even if she didn't know he was really almost 170. As they climb into her Prius, though, she understands a little bit; what Caroline saw originally, and what Elena sees now (but is too terrified to embrace). She sees Damon for what he really is, if for just a moment. He's a man, who will do anything to protect those he loves, or those he's promised to preserve. Bonnie's pretty fortunate that even an amoral vampire, from time to time, honors the vows he made a century and a half ago to her ancestor.

The night they'd fought Klaus at the Decade Dance, she'd really gotten a glimpse of how he operated, how clever he is, and how determined he is to keep the woman he loves alive. And, in spite of everything, Bonnie has been changed by all of this, too. She lives in a world of kill or be killed, and she knows she'd rather have Damon on her side. She feels safe with him.

She knows now, she would do anything to save him, just as she would Elena or Caroline, Tyler or Matt, Jeremy or Alaric. They had created their own group, and despite the differences among them, she can't let any of them go without a fight. And now, now they're fighting for Stefan, and they are united, and she can never go back.

 

 

When Stefan's car appears in the rearview mirror, Damon hums a little tune of satisfaction and settles back in the passenger seat. "The best part is that Stefan really _can't_ come because of the whole compulsion thing," he mentions to Bonnie. "He'll keep Elena safe, and in Mystic Falls, and we can do our experiment and get ready to face off with Klaus. It's the perfect plan."

He grins because he can't help it and Bonnie's eyes slide over to him briefly before returning to the road. "Don't get cocky," she chides.

"Sorry, Sabrina, I was born this way," he smirks back.

"Why do you have to do that? Why can't you just call me by my name?"

"Sorry, _Bonnie_ ," he says. "I don't know, it's just fun to mock you, I guess. But I can play nice. I don't need any headaches from you today."

She makes an _uh-huh_ sound under her breath and he turns his head to watch the passing scenery. He's in a really great mood, and he can't help the jubilant feeling welling up inside him as they speed down the road to their destination. They are just a few hours away from killing an Original, for real, this time, and he can't wait.

"So, I have a question," Bonnie says, drawing his attention back to her.

"What's that?"

"What's the deal with you and Elena?"

He hesitates, unsure what she means. "What do you mean, _what's the deal_? You know what the deal is. I protect her. She loves my brother. We're trying to save his sorry ass from Klaus–"

"No, Damon, I mean, have you and Elena, ever...you know?"

"What?" He pokes her shoulder with a finger, surprised, and a bit intrigued by her nosiness. "Have we ever...what?"

She blows out a breath, and looks at him from the corner of her eye again. "This weird thing happened yesterday with her, and at first I thought it was about Jeremy and me breaking up, but Matt thought maybe she..."

"Hmmm?" Damon prompts when she trails off. He has no idea where this is going, but it's a much more interesting conversation than he anticipated for the drive to the lake.

"I think maybe she's jealous–well, okay, Matt thinks she's jealous."

"Jealous of what?"

"Of you, and me. Like, our little friendship, or whatever we've got going here. Why did you tell her about that day you came over and I was crying? I really don't appreciate you going around telling everyone about that."

Damon doesn't say anything immediately, since he has to process this whole idea. He hadn't even thought about it, to be honest, but it did play into Elena's whole angry diatribe from the day before about him leaving Bonnie alone. He knows there is more between him and Elena than she would like to admit, but it seems rather ludicrous to him that she would be jealous of anyone, even Bonnie. "I wasn't gossiping about you, if that's what you're thinking," he clarifies. "But she was prodding me for information, and I was trying to get her off the trail of what we had planned. I might have mentioned your woes with Jeremy as a diversionary tactic, but I wasn't trying to make her jealous. I mean, that's crazy. What is she thinking?"

Bonnie laughs. "I know, right? That's what I said to Matt. I was like, first of all, Damon is so devoted to Elena, he'd never, in a million years look at me, and second, it's me! Like you and I would ever..." She shakes her head, but her eyes linger on him for a beat longer than he expects.

He looks at her, really _looks_ at her, for maybe the first time ever. It's not that Bonnie's not beautiful; she's as goddessy and witchy as the best of them, and Damon has to admit that her fortitude under pressure has made her more badass than anyone he currently knows, though Elena is often impressive to him in that way too. But, yeah, as much as he wants Bonnie on his side, not giving him aneurysms or secretly leaving him out of the loop for any reason, he's never thought of her in _that_ way.

Like, as a _girl_. But she is; a beautiful, strong, amazing girl (woman) who has somehow become important to him, even if it's not in a romantic sense. "I guess it's not the _craziest_ thing, ever," he muses. "Otherwise, Elena wouldn't have thought it. But..."

"I know," Bonnie says, the calm assurance in her voice telling him he doesn't need to elaborate. "You love Elena, and by the time you get around to being over that, I'll be long dead."

He snorts, and drags his eyes away from her. "God, let's hope it doesn't last that long." He looks back at her suddenly, sees the smile on her lips as she concentrates on the road. "You don't want me to be into you, do you?"

"What? No! No. I mean," she shrugs. "I can see the appeal. But you're Damon."

"And you're Bonnie," he retorts, satisfied that they're seeing things eye to eye.

Bonnie clears her throat and adjusts the shoulder strap of her seatbelt. "But Elena's different. She's already let you in too deep. And as much as I hate to admit it, there is something...sweet about the two of you."

"When we're not fighting, which is rare."

"Right," Bonnie says with another chuckle. "Just wait until she finds out about this. She'll be mad because she thought we were boinking behind her back and it was really this, and then she'll be mad because she was jealous of nothing, but really mad because we should have told her all along."

Damon starts laughing partway through her little speech. "Boinking? I haven't heard that one in a while. Besides, I don't see it that way. I don't know why everyone always has to tell everyone everything. The less you know, the better off you are, in the long run. Why doesn't anyone ever see it _that_ way?"

"Because relationships are about trust, Damon. Elena wants to trust you, but if you keep important things from her, even if it's for her own good, it makes her feel like you don't trust her. And if you don't have trust, you don't have anything, believe me."

As always, he has a quick retort on his tongue, but he hesitates just a moment and that gives Bonnie an opportunity to finish with, "If you love her, and you really want her—you want a chance with her, you should make her your strongest ally. She's jealous because she thinks you might have that with me. I mean, she's probably _also_ jealous thinking we might have, _you know_ , but it's the other thing that matters more."

Damon doesn't like the fact that what Bonnie's saying seems to resonate within him. It's too late to fix it now, anyway, and if he's honest, he doesn't want to. He never wants Elena anywhere near the action because he gets distracted worrying about her safety. "Maybe next time," he says aloud and Bonnie scoffs.

"If you're not careful, there won't be a next time."

"Hey! Buzzkill Bob, can we just kill an Original and skip the lecture? Good grief."

"Fine," she mutters.

"Fine," he mutters back. It's so laughable, he almost starts chuckling again. Him and Bonnie? _Yeah, right._

 

 

Elena walks into the Boarding House like she belongs there, like she owns it (and once upon a time, she did, at least in name only), and it's to find Stefan alone in the great room. She looks around, and listens, but there's nothing to hear. The place is unusually quiet.

"He's not here," Stefan says, barely sparing her a glance. "He and Bonnie are off on a couple's retreat."

"What?" she asks, stumbling down the two steps into the room. She'd been there just the day before, only Damon had been the one lounging on the couch, and she'd been at once angry with him and relieved to see him there. Stefan gives her neither emotion; she just feels confused to see someone she doesn't know in the visage of someone she once thought she knew so well.

"He and Bonnie had to go save Caroline from Tyler, or Tyler from Caroline, who knows. Rebekah has gone to make sure nobody important ends up dead."

"Gone where?"

"Lockwood's lake cabin."

Stefan's thumbing through a magazine, but he does look up at her when she doesn't respond. "Don't get any ideas," he warns. "We're staying right here, safe and sound, in Mystic Falls."

Sudden irritation fills Elena; her annoyance with Stefan has increased every time he nonchalantly comments on his _job_ of _protecting_ her because it's completely ludicrous. The one she needs to be protected from is _him_. She pulls out her phone and sends Damon a quick text. _Where are you?_ Then she looks back at Stefan, who is watching her intently. "You said Bonnie and Damon went to the Lockwood's cabin because something's wrong with Caroline? And you, you're just planning on sitting here, even though Caroline is your friend? Not to mention, you did nothing to stop Rebekah, your boss's sister, from following them. You've got to know, first chance he gets, Damon's going to kill her."

Stefan holds his hands up as if he's helpless. "She's an Original, she can't be killed, not temporarily even, by Damon, Caroline, or Tyler, who are all vampires, remember? Bonnie won't kill her; Bonnie's got principles."

"They've been spending a lot of time together, Stefan. I wouldn't count on Bonnie not being terribly influenced by your brother right about now." Elena turns on her heel and starts for the door, but of course Stefan beats her there.

"You're not going after them," he says, standing between her and the door.

"You can't compel me," she bites back. "I put vervain in everything I drink."

"No," he agrees. "I can't compel you, but I can man-handle you into the basement for safekeeping."

Elena rolls her eyes and then steps closer. "Go ahead, try it," she says in a low voice. Stefan tips his head back, smirking in obvious over-confidence. When he reaches for her, she jams her fist into his stomach and releases the stakes that are always strapped to her forearm these days. Stefan grunts and doubles over, falling into her on his way down. Elena steps back, and reaches into her bag to pull out a vervain dart. She stabs it into his shoulder, which causes him to groan loudly, and then pushes him over with her leg.

He sprawls out on his back and squints up at her. "You've always underestimated me, Stefan. What I can handle, what I should know, whether or not I'd just lay down and die when Klaus has taken everything from me. Guess again."

She walks out with him calling for her, but she doesn't even look back. She's grateful that her father and Tyler's father had grown up together and always had the summer tradition of taking their families to the lake. She knows exactly where the Lockwood lake house is, and if all her friends are there, that's where she belongs, too.

 

 

It's nearly ten o'clock when she and Alaric get to the lake house. (She might be able to take down Stefan alone, but she's not dumb enough to go anywhere without back up now.) Caroline's car is parked in the driveway, and Bonnie's car is next to the curb, but Stefan's car (which Rebekah must have driven) is on the lawn with the driver's side door standing open. There's no sign of people anywhere. The house is dark, save one lone lamp in an upstairs window.

"You've got your stakes on, right?" Ric asks.

"Yes, I'm fully equipped." She holds both arms up as proof.

"Let's stick together," he says and they walk up to the house. As they near the front door, they hear what sounds like screaming, and Elena feels all the hair on her body stand straight up. Her head swivels towards the sound at the same moment Alaric points. "Boathouse," he murmurs and they turn and head for the small structure near the dock beneath a lamppost, some fifty yards away.

She hears it again, more screaming, and this time she's positive it's Damon. Before it had just been a hunch, but now, she's sure it's his voice and she can't help but start running to get there faster. "Elena!" Alaric calls after her, but she doesn't slow down.

As she gets to the small grassy patch that leads to the door of the boathouse, she sees Tyler, but it's too late to get out of his way. He runs at her and tackles her, and when he lands on top of her, her breath is knocked from her lungs.

Lying limply beneath him, she hears him mutter an apology and then he rolls off of her. Distantly, she hears Caroline say, “She can’t go in anyway, Tyler, Bonnie magically sealed it so no one can go inside. You didn’t have to practically kill her.” Caroline appears over Tyler’s shoulder and shoves him away roughly. “Elena, are you alright? Talk to me!”

Elena nods since she can’t speak yet as she’s still trying to regain her breath, and she silently thanks the universe that she doesn’t have to stake Tyler for protecting Klaus for some reason. Not that she would hesitate, because she wouldn’t, but it wouldn’t be the same as staking Stefan. Caroline helps her sit up and starts speaking very rapidly. “We had a plan, we were all going to lure Rebekah down here, Bonnie and Damon had set up the spell. They’re all trapped in there until the spell is finished, but…”

Caroline stops talking as Alaric arrives and demands, “What the hell is going on?”

Damon screams again, and Elena is suddenly mobile once more. She leaps to her feet and manages to out-maneuver two vampires and a vampire hunter to get to the door of the boathouse.

Caroline calls out, “The spell won’t work on Rebekah, because the Original Witch is her mother, and she won’t hurt her own daughter, so all the energy is going to the only other place it can go.”

Elena slams into the protective barrier that won’t allow her to enter the boathouse, but she can see everything perfectly. There are candles everywhere, their flames intermittently shooting towards the ceiling of the small thirty-by-thirty building. Rebekah is chained to a chair on one side of the boat slip and Damon writhes on the floor on the other side while Bonnie hovers over him, her hands outstretched, but not touching him. Elena can tell she’s trying to do something to counter-act the spell, but whatever it is, if it’s helping, it’s hard to tell. Damon groans and his body contorts grotesquely, and blood seems to be coming from his actual pores, because it shimmers over his skin the way a sheen of sweat would.

She can hear noise behind her, Caroline, Alaric, and Tyler arguing about what to do, how to help. Elena calls Bonnie’s name, but her friend doesn’t even look up. It’s taking everything she’s got to focus on Damon.

Standing there, feeling impotent, Elena slams into an equally invisible barrier inside herself. There is the moment before, when admitting to herself that Damon’s death would devastate her is almost impossible to face—something she’s known since May when he lay dying in her arms—and there is this moment, when she’s sure that Rebekah will kill him, if whatever’s happening to him already doesn’t end his existence. The Original is slowly disentangling herself from the chains that bind her, and she keeps watching Bonnie and Damon, the same way Elena is. Assuming Bonnie can keep him alive, assuming that when the spell ends he won’t be dead, just incredibly weak from blood loss and unspeakable, unknowable pain—he won’t be able to fight back. And, on top of all that, Rebekah is an Original, someone who he would not be a match for at his best.

Elena hears someone shrieking, “Give him your blood, Bonnie! Give him your blood!” It’s not until she slams her hand against the invisible door barrier so hard it hurts that she realizes it’s her own voice. And it’s her throat choking on the sobbing words, “Please, please, please, help him!” and it’s her tears falling down her face as she watches helplessly.

Bonnie finally looks at her, her own face sweat-streaked and panicked, and that’s when Elena hopes that Bonnie loves Damon half as much as she does so that he has a fighting chance.

Her best friend only hesitates a moment and then she picks up a nearby dagger (disproving Stefan's theory altogether), and slices the heel of her hand open. She presses it against Damon’s lips and Elena breathes a sigh of relief when his hand comes up to hold Bonnie’s palm to his face. Then all the candles burn out in one big gust of wind, and the boathouse goes dark. Elena finds herself on the ground again, this time because Rebekah has flown out through the door at top speed, knocking her down once more.

"Don't let her get away," Ric yells, and Elena hears the whooshing sound that indicates that Tyler and Caroline have followed her. She climbs to her feet, uncaring of whatever might happen out there in the wilderness behind her. All that matters is Damon, in the darkness, drinking Bonnie's blood.

She stumbles into the boathouse, the doorway free and clear. A shaft of light pierces through the skylight and guides her across the uneven floorboards to where they are. She kneels down next to his prone body and reaches one hand out to grasp Bonnie's shoulder while the other fists in the leather jacket on Damon's arm, the one that's holding Bonnie's hand to his lips. She feels him tense under her and then Bonnie's gasping in pain and drawing her hand back. "Elena..." Damon whispers.

Through her tears, she says the only thing she can. "You're okay. You'll be okay." She thinks the lie is for herself more than it is for him.

"I...I'm s-sorry," he breathes out, and then he's silent. His arm goes limp in her grasp and it's only when she presses her hand to his face that she can feel that his eyes have closed.

Before she can even truly process the idea that he's dead, she's thrown herself across him. "No!" she shouts. Bonnie's arms surround her, and they weep together.

 

 

Damon wakes to blinding sun, so he turns his face away from it. Then he feels a great weight on his arm, and he has the errant thought that he's alive, oddly enough, but someone has trapped him somewhere that will undoubtedly make him wish he could remove the ring from his paralyzed arm and let the sun blister him away.

Then he opens his eyes and sees a mass of brown hair against white sheets, and he understands that a girl is sleeping on his hand.

And he's perfectly fine, if a bit sore and suffering some kind of bone-deep ache throughout his body. He's lying in a twin bed and the blankets are tucked up under his arms, much like hospital patients on television. (Elena is the girl sleeping on his hand.)

The sun indicates morning, that's all. Not imprisonment. (At least, not any imprisonment he's anxious to escape.)

He tries to say her name, but his throat is dry, and the croaky sound that emerges is less "Elena," and more, "'Le-a," and she jerks upright, instantly awake, with mascara smudged across her face.

Without any words being uttered, she produces a knife, puts it against her wrist and then presses her arm to his mouth so hard even if he didn't want to take it, he'd have no other choice. Her blood slides over his lips, dribbles inside his teeth, flows in tiny droplets over his tongue, and he remembers suddenly, hears her voice commanding Bonnie to give him her blood, feels the tears as they hit his skin when she leaned over him a moment later.

He remembers how it was then, to really understand; how it feels _now_ , to grasp in some intangible, wordless reality how deeply she cares for him, how her life blood fills him with something more than the power to heal and live forever.

How she wanted Bonnie to save him, _please, please, please, help him!_

He knows vampires can't have heart attacks, but he's pretty sure he's having one anyway. Elena had been jealous. Elena had come after them (because she's Elena) but she brought Ric—he remembers seeing him standing just inside the door before he passed out. Elena had been sleeping by his side, and is feeding him her blood right this minute.

He finally grabs her arm to relieve the pressure of it (her enthusiasm makes his heart continue to pound erratically, but the slightly crazed look on her face worries him). He places a soft kiss against her wrist, gently pushes her arm away. The blood is not his goal, was never his goal, not with Elena. He doesn't want her blood, he wants her heart, her soul, her _everything_.

"Are you okay?" he asks her, his voice restored. In a world where her pretty crying eyes never give way to red noses or blotchy skin, she appears now for all the world the most unkempt he's ever seen her.

She nods, purses her lips, blinks back sudden tears. Then she smiles, and it's like a ray of sun directly penetrating his chest. "I'm fine," she says firmly. "I'm fine, because you're alright."

He can't help the frown that creases his forehead, nor the words that spill from his lips. "I feel like I missed something really important," and that's the truth. Certainly yesterday he knew Elena cared for him, that their friendship meant something to her, that the attraction she feels for him is both unsettling to her and something she can't resist testing the limits of.

But today, she looks at him with unreserved, unrestrained emotion, and he's afraid to call it what it is, but there is no other term that springs readily to mind. So he just lies quietly as she tugs her wrist from his hand ("You're bleeding," he reminds her) and she leans over him, placing her lips on his, and her tongue flicks over his, and he knows she can taste her own metallic tang within.

"I love you, Damon," she says, her voice so soft, so gentle; the wonder he feels at her words shines in her eyes, paralyzes him in a different way. (Time frozen, world stopped, heart galloping away so that he knows he's not having a heart attack—possibly a panic attack?) "I should have told you a long time ago," she adds.

He can't...not quite. It's not real, it can't be. "Yep," he grouses. "I definitely missed something. Bonnie!" he shouts, but he doesn't need to, the witch is sleeping curled up on a big over-stuffed chair in the corner of the room, but he doesn't see her until she stirs, obviously having been pulled from a deep, deep sleep.

"Huh?" she asks, sitting up slowly.

"Something weird is happening," he states, and it's not just that these two girls have obviously been holding a vigil for him.

"Damon–" Elena says, scrambling from her awkward kneeling position next to the bed to sit on the edge.

"Where are we?" he asks, finally looking around and realizing he doesn't recognize anything.

"We're at the Lockwood's lake house," Bonnie answers. "Remember?" She and Elena exchange glances, but her gaze returns very quickly to his, concern etched upon her face.

"I remember," he says and he glances at Elena who doesn't seem to know where to look, and her eyes ping-pong back and forth between him and Bonnie. "Rebekah got away, didn't she?"

Bonnie nods. "Tyler and Caroline couldn't track her." Then she looks at Elena. "What's the matter?" Bonnie asks, and Elena shrugs rather helplessly.

"I told him I love him and he freaked out."

"Well, that would do it," Bonnie says, and her gaze falls back to him again, this time sympathetically.

"Yeah, I guess. I didn't mean to say it, it just sort of popped out." Elena's head swings back around to him. "But I totally mean it. I do, love you, Damon. I just–I've been afraid, and–"

"What about Stefan?" he interrupts and then he forces himself upright in the bed. He's totally stripped down to nothing, and the sudden realization that he's naked under the covers makes this whole scene, and the two of them in the room with him, all the more disconcerting. (Any other time, the innuendo would fly, but he's feeling totally exposed.) "Where're my clothes?" he demands, not allowing Elena to answer his first question.

"I'll get Ric," Bonnie says, and she gets up and quickly leaves the room.

Elena looks back at him uncertainly, and then slowly eases off the bed to stand beside it. "Alaric undressed you. Your clothes needed to be washed; they were soaked with blood. He put you to bed, but I wasn't convinced you'd live, and the only way I could rest is if I could stay with you. I wanted Bonnie nearby in case more magic needed to be performed. But I think blood is doing the trick; you're going to be okay." She reaches out tentatively, her fingers sliding into the hair against his forehead to push it back gently. She stares hard at the top of his head as she strokes her hand through the strands. "Bonnie said I should tell you, that you deserve to know, that I should do it before I could talk myself out of it, but maybe you don't–"

Suddenly, he reaches his hand up, grabs the wrist hovering in front of his face, and jerks her down into his lap. She gasps as she lands against him and he clasps her hard against his chest. "Say it again," he breathes.

Her lips tremble, but her eyes smile. "I love you." He searches her gaze for something, for a seed of doubt, but he can't find any. He wants to ask about his brother again, but he can't bring himself to say Stefan's name a second time, especially when she leans forward and brushes her lips over his. A shudder ricochets through him. He cannot even contemplate anything else at this point.

For now, this is all he wants, all he needs.

When Elena giggles happily, he buries his face in her throat. He hears Bonnie and Ric's footsteps shuffle away from the bedroom door, and he wants to thank them for being real friends—ones who don't interrupt the most perfect moment of his existence thus far.

 

 

Bonnie and Alaric are the first to be privy to the actual romantic relationship of Damon and Elena. Tyler and Caroline had gone back to Mystic Falls to check on Stefan when Elena told them she'd staked and vervained him, leaving Ric and Bonnie to mind a recovering Damon with Elena, who refused to leave his side.

Bonnie encourages her as those silent hours of night stretch out, and their fear that Damon will die recedes. She’s suspected it for a long time, but now there is no doubt left. Elena loves Damon the way he loves her, and for her best friend to keep fighting it is just stupid.

They could all die tomorrow; there is no time for regret.

Bonnie knows as soon as they get back to town, she’s going to lay one on Matt Donovan. Because the time for subtlety has passed; it’s time to seize the day.

“They are sort of ridiculously sweet, aren’t they?” Alaric says in a quiet voice as they make food in the kitchen while Damon and Elena sit on the sun porch just off the dining room, wrapped up in a blanket together, talking and cuddling.

Bonnie pauses to watch them with him and then bumps her hip against his. “So much for a big badass vampire, huh? He’s a pile of goo with her, really. It’s even worse now that he knows she feels the same way.”

Alaric chuckles and goes back to peeling potatoes. “If you can’t beat them, join them, I guess,” he says philosophically.

“Hey, it helps that Damon isn’t as giant an asshole as he used to be, you know,” she says, reaching around him for a knife to chop vegetables.

“I can hear you, you know!” Damon calls from the sun porch.

Bonnie smiles as he cranes his neck back to look through the window at them. Waggling her fingers at him, she says in a loud voice, “I was counting on it!”

It’s funny how they haven’t accomplished anything—Rebekah is God knows where, telling Klaus God knows what; Stefan is still compelled to be less than helpful in anyway, and they are literally expecting his arrival any minute, assuming the vervain will have more than passed out of his system by now; and nothing is resolved the way they’d hoped, and yet, there is a sense of renewed determination to fight harder, to find a way to make it happen.

Bonnie still has a secret weapon. The Original Witch might not want to kill Rebekah, but she’s got no problem with ending Klaus’s life. In those moments before she escaped from the boathouse, Rebekah had seen what Bonnie had seen—a beautiful apparition of an ancient woman who had birthed both Klaus and Rebekah; Esther, she was called, and, she told her daughter, Niklaus had killed her centuries ago, though he had blamed their father for the deed.

Bonnie suspects Rebekah might serve _Niklaus_ up on a silver platter to them, but until then, she can let Damon and Elena enjoy their newfound honesty. She’d already heard him apologize three times for not letting Elena in on the plan, only to have Elena tell him it didn’t matter now.

It will matter in the future, but Bonnie has no doubts now. Together, they will kill an unkillable being, and free a brother from bondage. It's that, or go down swinging, which she knows is what Damon intends to do. In the meantime, maybe they all deserve some moments on the sun porch.

Bonnie, for one, isn't going to begrudge them that.


End file.
